“For years, doubts have persisted over the authenticity of the iconic Robert Capa photo “Falling Soldier,” taken during what conflict? A: Spanish Civil War, B: Korean War, C: Cuban Revolution, D: World War I.”

Millions of Americans received a history lesson last night when this question was asked of a contestant on the US version of “Who wants to be a millionaire?”

It was the $25,000 question and the contestant, waitress Kelly Norton, bombed. According to a news report on the Philedelphia Inquirer‘s Philly.com website, Norton asked the studio audience and used a double-dip lifeline, first guessing D and then B.

Bad luck Kelly, you should have checked out Ethical Martini before going on air. I could have helped you out and, who knows, we might have had a shot at the big time.

Why am I posting about this?

Good question.

The simple answer is that EM has gone feral today with hundreds of hits on my various posts about Robert Capa’s famous image. I always like to know where spikes in my traffic are coming from and after an hour or so of searching I finally saw the Philly.com piece. I’m assuming that folk who watched WWTBAM? are this morning (US time) googling like mad to catch up on the Spanish Civil War.

New flash dudes, it was over 75 years ago.

Is it interesting that she asked the audience and still couldn’t pick the right answer. Don’t the learn anything about the Spanish Civil War in American high schools? I know, I know, silly question.

I’m firmly of the view that the iconic “falling soldier” was staged by Capa. Most probably it was done as a crude propaganda stunt as Capa was politically aligned with the Spanish republicans and against the Fascist forces of General Franco.

I also think it’s a quiet little joke that Capa’s photo was used on a “Dancing with the stars-themed” game show. The line between reality and reality television is already blurred for so many people that the whole absurdist idea of theming a game show around another stupid celebrity overloaded game show seems like common sense.

How cruel to make a waitress from Valley Forge answer a question about a controversy in the arcane realm of photojournalism.

Norton walked way with an easy five-grand and I guess that’s a lot of tequila shots in most Philly bars.

Conservative US columnist George F Will is syndicated from the Washington Post to lots of other newspapers and online portals. In a column this week George (belatedly) stumbles upon the news that a Spanish historian has demonstrated that Robert Capa’s famous “falling man”, or “falling soldier” or “death of a Republican” photograph from the Spanish Civil War is probably fake.

of course, news from nowhere (ie: anywhere outside the US) does tend to circulate slowly in the American media, but I can’t believe that George F Will was really just scratching around for a space filler when he happened on the Capa story and decided it would be a good shovel for bashing “leftists” over the head.

His audience certainly caught the dog-whistle implications over at the Houston Chronicle – obviously not a bastion of liberal journalistic values. I would think that a similar audience is probably regularly reading Mr Will’s missives at RealClearPolitics too. where it appeared under the astonishingly original headline A picture can lie. I’m not sure about the Dubuque Telegraph Herald, no comments have been posted there yet.

Anyway, the DTH does provide a link to George’s email, so I’ve sent him a note asking where he got the inspiration from to write this column, how much he gets paid for recycling this stuff and if he actually knows the name of the “Spanish professor” who has worked so hard to debunk the Capa “falling soldier” myth.

But, perhaps he doesn’t care, because the purpose of the column is really for Mr Will to fume at the awful leftists and postmodernists who have been defending Capa’s reputation:

Capa was a man of the left and “Falling Soldier” helped to alarm the world about fascism rampant. But noble purposes do not validate misrepresentations. Richard Whelan, Capa’s biographer, calls it “trivializing” to insist on knowing whether this photo actually shows a soldier mortally wounded. Whelan says “the picture’s greatness actually lies in its symbolic implications, not in its literal accuracy.”

Rubbish. The picture’s greatness evaporates if its veracity is fictitious.

You see, this was a news story four months ago in July when professor Susperregui actually released the details of his study:

At any rate, that’s where it stood until this July, when the ICP gallery show of This Is War! opened in Spain. With that came articles in Spanish newspapers and then British newspapers (summarized on the Web in the States here and on the BBC Web site here), revealing research by José Manuel Susperregui showing the picture was not taken at Cerro Muriano but Espejo, even farther from the front than previously thought. “Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting,” the Spanish paper El Periodico said. It “demonstrates that the death was not real.”

I had seen the Capa/Taro exhibition, This Is War! in London and basically outlined the exact same arguments in a blogpost dated 1st November. So Mr Will is a year late on this one. The story was in the New York Times on 17 August this year, and you can read it in The cave of Montesinos.

Well, the controversy around Robert Capa’s “falling soldier” image from the Spanish civil war is not settled yet. A Spanish newspaper is now saying that the image was staged. AFP is now running the story globally.

Regular readers of Ethical Martini will be aware that I have long been arguing that the photograph was staged. So I’m not really surprised that this is running again.

I said recently that we would have to wait to see what fresh evidence might emerge from the Mexican suitcase before it can be finally resolved.

In May this year the New York International Center for Photography, which houses the Capa archives, reported it could not find the negative for this image in the Mexican suitcase which did contain many Spanish civil war photographs.

One interesting note from the AFP story:

El Periodico said it based its study on an exhibition–launched in New York in 2007 and now in Barcelona –of 150 Capa photos taken in conflicts during the 1930s and 1940s.

When I was in London last year I heard that a suitcase of missing Robert Capa negatives had been found, but I couldn’t get any confirmation. Now it’s been announced that there is indeed a suitcase, or at least three cardboard cartons of negatives and it’s been handed over the the Capa archives at the International Center of Photography in New York.

The boxes contained rolls of negatives taken by Capa, Gerda Taro and David Seymour (known as Chim).

In a media release the Center announced that the 3500 negatives are in good shape considering they’re over 70 years old and that they will be conserved for public display and research.

“We are thrilled about the return of what has become known as ‘The Mexican Suitcase,’” said ICP Director Willis E. Hartshorn. “These small cardboard boxes containing the negatives will give us critical information about the working process of three extraordinary wartime photographers. We are hoping for new discoveries, and the ability to provide access and new scholarship to the field. Public access to the images through publications, exhibitions, and online viewing is another key objective.” [ICoP 30 Jan 09]

If the rolls of negatives contain the sequence in which the famous “falling soldier” image appears it may help to clear up one of the most confounding puzzles in 20th Century photojournalism. Was the photograph staged, or was it, as Capa always claimed, a lucky shot at the exact moment a sniper’s bullet felled the Republican soldier?

Personally, I have been arguing for sometime on EM that the image was staged, perhaps as a result of Capa’s loyalty to the Spanish republican cause. Read the rest of this entry »

I think there are some unresolved issues here, including the ethics of war reporting.

Alex’s original post is in Chinese and the translation machines just make garble of what is no doubt excellent Chinese prose. So, I won’t insult anyone with a machine translation. Suffice to post this interesting photoshop image, which you can argue over.

The post in Chinese is here: Monologue on Photography. If any one cares to provide a readable translation, I’d be happy to post it.

I’m not sure that this proves anything. As I have written recently, particularly about the Barbican exhibition which finishes this week, the two falling soldier images seem to be of different men – variations in uniform, particularly the leather webbing, seem to suggest that they are not the same person.

[Traveller’s tip: Don’t miss: This is war! at the Barbican till 25 January 2009]

I was fortunate enough to enjoy a ‘private viewing’ of the Robert Capa and Gerda Taro exhibition at the Barbican this week. Helen and I got doused by a storm walking from Moorgate, but once we were inside, the magic of the Barbican Centre took over. We spent the next 90 minutes immersed in some great war reportage and an installation of contemporary photojournalistic and new media commentaries on Afghanistan and Iraq.

On the way home I was caught in that wonderful (for an expat of 40 years) October snow. It was bitterly cold, but the chance to take this photo made it all worthwhile. The white blobs in the foreground are snowflakes.

Robert Capa and Gerda Taro were an amazing couple as well as great photographers. This retrospective provides hundreds of images showing how they worked together or alone and using a variety of cameras and techniques.

Many of the images in this collection are clearly staged and posed: including many famous images by both Capa and Taro from the Spanish civil war.

They first went to Spain in 1936 and their sympathies were with the Republicans (also known as Loyalists) who were defending their newly established (and left-leaning) government from the Fascist militias led by General Franco.

I don’t doubt Taro and Capa’s political allegiance to the Republicans. That was always the right side of the barricades and many fine socialists, intellectuals, poet, anarchists, workers, women and children died defending and extending working class political rights against the rising tide of European fascism.

But did this ideological sympathy for revolution in Spain create ethical problems for either Capa or Taro? One famous series of images by Robert Capa sheds some interesting light on this debate.

Known universally as ‘the falling soldier’, one iconic image is at the centre of a longstanding question hanging over Robert Capa’s reputation as one of the finest photojournalists of the 20th Century.

Next week, my cousin Helen is taking me to see the exhibition of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro photographs that recently opened at the Barbican.

Capa and Taro are two important figures in 20th century war journalism. Taro was German and I must admit I know nothing about her beyond what I’ve read on the Barbican website. I’m keen to see some of her work and learn more about her. [Barbican notice about This is War!]

However, Robert Capa is much more well known. Unfortunately his fame comes from a controversial image he shot during the Spanish civil war. Known universally as the ‘falling soldier’, the image captures a moment of death on the frontline, but there has been doubt around the provenance of this image for 50 years.